Review of Cargo Pilot from JustFlight

The Microsoft Flight Simulator range is a tremendous product. You can spend hours just flying around, most of the time fairly aimlessly, just admiring the product – the terrific graphics, the realistic feeling of flight itself – or messing about with the weather seeing if you can land at your local airport in zero visibility during a snow storm. Eventually, though, you come to the point where you wish there was some purpose to it beyond simply marvelling at the technological impressiveness of it all.

This is where Cargo Pilot, from JustFlight, comes in. Cargo Pilot puts you in charge of your own airline, flying cargo around the world and receiving financial rewards whilst having a great deal of fun and satisfaction along the way.

Upon starting the program, you’re presented with your office.

After setting a couple of options, such as currency conversion rates, you’re ready to create your Airline. This is a simple affair, requiring you to provide an airline name, pilot name, an initial aircraft (I went for the default Cessna Caravan, but you can pick any aircraft, including installed add-ons, so long as the combined cost of aircraft and base airfield are within your initial budget) and your first base airfield. I chose EGBW (Wellesbourne Mountford in the UK). Think carefully about your starting airfield. Remember that your aircraft only has a set range, and you’ll be flying between your base and airfields within flying range of your base, so be sure to pick a base that will be in an area of interest for you.

Once you’ve created your airline, you’re ready to create your first flight. Selecting Flight Management from your Office screen, you’ll see a list of cargo and routes to choose from. One thing I would  liked to have seen here is the ability to order the list by route length, in addition to the current ICAO code, Delivery Date, Category and Weight. You can select multiple cargo manifests (see screenshot below), so long as the route is the same (and of course your selected aircraft needs to be able to carry the amount of cargo and fuel required). You can also choose how weather will be applied to the flight, selecting between None, Normal and Hard. Hard is likely to throw you around the sky quite a bit, so be prepared.

For my initial flight, I chose a relatively short (40nm) flight from Derby to my home base of Wellesbourne Mountford. When you select Accept Job from the Flight Management screen, Flight Simulator starts (after giving you the option of printing your flight plan) with your aircraft on the runway. Prior to flight, you need to check your payload to ensure it matches the weight selected in the Flight Management screen and that you have enough fuel to carry out your flight. You can use ATC for your flight (which I did for this one). Once you’ve checked your fuel and payload, you’re ready for your flight. The flight plan is automatically loaded into the FS flight planner and hence shows on the GPS. You can also hit F10 at any time to have the flight plan shown on the FSX kneeboard.

At this point, the Cargo Pilot Tracker is in operation, watching your every move, so be careful how you treat your aircraft and cargo! In the FSX version, this is completely automated and monitors your flight as soon as FSX is started. In the FS2004 version, you need to select “Start Tracker� from the new menu that appears in FS2004.

You’re penalised at the end of the flight if you mishandle the aircraft (e.g. land too heavily) so I was actually very conscious on finals of making a good landing! When you’re just flying around with no real aim it doesn’t really make a difference if you make a terrible landing, apart from perhaps denting your pride. However, with Cargo Pilot, it’s going to make a difference to your profit, giving you an added incentive to fly “properlyâ€?.

When you’ve successfully (hopefully!) landed and have set your parking brake and shut down your engine, you can exit FS, at which point Cargo Pilot is re-loaded and you’ll see the result of your flight. If you’ve had a bad flight, this will be reflected here, where you’ll be shown the percentage damage to your airframe and/or cargo. If you’ve had a particularly bad flight, for example if you’ve landed at the wrong airfield, you may find yourself receiving no income at all for the flight. In my case, I received ?474.70 for carrying the cargo, paid ?11.15 for my fuel and a landing fee of ?14.53, leaving me a net profit for the company of ?449.05 Not bad for a first flight with a new airline!

Whilst in the “Officeâ€?, you can check your flight logs and current financial situation. As you fly more routes carrying more cargo (thus increasing your company bank balance), you are presented with the opportunity of upgrading your aircraft and your base, aiming for the ultimate objective of flying heavies around the world from your base at an international airfield. It’s worth mentioning at this stage that Cargo Pilot is not in real-time, as such. If it was, it could take you literally years to reach the position of upgrading your aircraft and airfield. Every Friday, Cargo Pilot looks at the flights you’ve carried out during the week, adding any profit into the business simulation, but then it also adds simulated income and expenses to the balance sheet which allows you to perform upgrades in a shorter time frame.

The Fleet Management section of your office is where you can buy and sell aircraft, carry out repairs and adjust aircraft configurations. This last item is important to check, as not all the data for an aircraft can be obtained from its configuration file. Cargo Pilot does its best to complete the missing data, but it’s worth manually checking this to make sure it’s correct.

If you’re lucky enough to have both FSX and Flight Simulator 2004 installed, you are able to switch between the two using a switching application provided with the package. You need to make sure that your selected aircraft is in the version you are switching to.

Installation

I installed the downloadable version of Cargo Pilot from the JustFlight web site. Installation was very straightforward. During the installation process, you are required to enter the proof of purchase code and a response code you receive when you purchase the product. This is then verified and installation continues

System Requirements

JustFlight quote the following as the system requirements for Cargo Pilot:

Flight Simulator X or FS2004

Pentium III 1.7GHz PC (2.5GHz for FSX) 

512Mb RAM (1Gb for FSX)

64Mb 3D graphics card (128Mb for FSX)

Windows XP

1Gb hard drive space

I tested the application using Flight Simulator X on a machine with a 2Gb Centrino processor with 1Gb RAM, a 256Mb nVidia 7800 graphics card and around 200Gb free space on my FSX install directory. With the Cargo Pilot Tracker running whilst in FSX, I noticed no difference whatsoever to the simulations performance.

Conclusion

Cargo Pilot is a terrific product. Having been a “Flight Simulator Pilotâ€? since the Commodore 64 days, I’ve tried most methods of flying the sim, from general sight-seeing to long-haul trans-Atlantic flights, both online and off, sometimes also using a Virtual Airline to try and add some meaning to the actual flight, but none have come as close as Cargo Pilot at giving real purpose to the flights themselves. It gives you a real buzz completing a flight successfully knowing it’s contributing to that aircraft or airfield upgrade you’ve been after.

I wholeheartedly recommend Cargo Pilot to any Flight Simulator enthusiast that is looking for that “something extra� to add to your Flight Simulator experience.

Cargo Pilot is available in both boxed and download versions.

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